A Deadly Education: Lesson One of The Scholomance, by Naomi Novik. Del Rey,2020

Galadriel- “El”- to pretty much everyone- is in her junior year at wizard school, which is very much not like Hogwarts. The school itself- the Scholomance- is a somewhat sentient structure that exists in the great void, with only one way in and one way out. And you only come in once, carrying nothing but what you have on your body, and out once, at graduation, again with only what you can carry on your body. There are no teachers or anyone other than the students. Lessons arrive magically on papers on your desk. You work on your own, and with others, to learn languages (very important because of spellwork), alchemy, building magical tools, etc. Grades arrive in the same way lesson assignments do. During their time in the school, students must be on their toes constantly, because the school is infested with magical creatures, all of which want to kill the students. And many, many students die through the years. Graduation is a run for the door through a field of monsters. Sometimes only 20% of the kids make it through four years and graduation.

But going to the Scholomance is better odds than going through one’s teens in the outside world; at puberty, for some reason, the magical monsters become really, really attracted to the young wizards. Better odds for survival if one is part of an Enclave, where the elite wizards with real power live, but El is not elite. She has no friends, never had any. Brought up in a commune run by her healer mother, she has no relationship skills whatsoever, and is shunned because of a vision her great-grandmother had that said El would be a destroyer of, well, everything.

El is smart, and extremely powerful. But you don’t get through graduation without allies. That’s the one thing she just doesn’t have in her corner.

I loved this book, despite a few problems. There was a possible racist mention, which I understand has been removed from later editions. Despite the school having students from all around the world, the main characters are pretty white and Asian. El herself is half Welsh and half Indian, but she is very far removed from the Indian half of herself; see above, great-grandmother’s vision. But I loved El and seeing her growth during the story. She reminds me of myself as a teen (minus the immense power and beauty); cranky, grumpy, snarky. And why wouldn’t she be; she’s been, and still is, regarded as a person with great potential for evil. She doesn’t know how to make friends. She’s completely cut off from the one person in her life she cares about, her mother. And, mostly, she’s a teenaged girl. The story is told in the first person, so we get the full picture of El’s life. There is a LOT of info dumps, but it takes a lot to describe the world, the school, the malignant creatures that stalk them constantly, the way magic works, and more. You’ve seen how much verbiage it’s taken me to give a rough picture of why it’s so interesting! It does slow down in places- it can take a lot to describe a run in with a single monster. But I found myself thoroughly engrossed in it. Five stars. (note: this is young adult)